Surely you are used to finding the typical box to verify that you are not a robot when you enter a website. It is something very common and time passes and it continues to appear. It is what is known as CAPTCHA. Sometimes it is simply checking a box, but on other occasions you have to select images or fill in letters and numbers that are shown to us with some difficulty, with the sole objective of proving that we are not a bot.
Why do you have to fill out CAPTCHAs?
You may be wondering why it is necessary to verify that you are not a robot and fill out these CAPTCHAs. Also, sometimes it’s really annoying. It is not uncommon for a series of images to appear and we get confused and have to repeat the process. The same when filling in letters or numbers, since the objective is that a computer program does not easily identify them and that, inevitably, complicates the situation a bit.
But the objective of verifying that we are not robots is precisely to prevent bots from entering. It is not something new, since it is something that has been part of the Internet for years. In this way, user data is more protected and there is less risk of suffering security problems.
If a bot enters a web page, it can sneak malware, send Spam or steal user data to later use in Phishing campaigns. These types of digital robots are responsible for crawling web pages and, for example, can flood a site with comments to insert fraudulent links or serve as junk advertising.
In this way, when we fill out a CAPTCHA or verify that we are not robots, we are giving guarantees to that website that we are a real user, a human, and in this way we can comment on an article on a website or write in a forum no problems for others.
Think about what would happen if a bot could post as many comments and send as many messages as it wanted. There could be a serious security and privacy issue for everyone. Besides that it would flood the page, which would also affect the image of that particular website.
Are CAPTCHAs infallible?
In the same way that there is no perfect antivirus that blocks 100% of threats or a firewall that is capable of preventing intruders from entering a network 100%, neither are CAPTCHAs. They are not infallible and that means that sometimes we come across junk messages in the comments of a web page, for example. There are even methods to fill out a CAPTCHA in Chrome automatically.
Although CAPTCHAs have improved over time and are increasingly better at detecting when they are a real user and when they may be a bot, the truth is that the latter have always found a way to circumvent them. Of course, the percentage is very small and logically the barrier of these verifications remains fundamental.
In short, when you come across a box to verify that you are not a robot or fill in some digits and letters, you should know that this is a security barrier that will protect your data, but also that of many other users. It is a way to prevent bots from flooding the Internet with Spam messages or content, which can also be dangerous.
